Flickr Using Questionable Excuse To Take Down Photos From Egypt

from the unfortunate dept

On Friday, after Clay Shirky's excellent talk about social media and the Middle East at SXSW, someone in the audience pointed out how some photos from Egypt of secret service agents had been removed from Flickr. Shirky later tweeted a link to coverage of the takedown letter, which mentions vague terms of service violations. Yahoo later came out and claimed the images were taken down because they weren't taken by the uploader. Of course, as some have pointed out, that's a bogus excuse, since plenty of people -- including Flickr's top employees -- regularly post images that they did not create. And, of course, in true Streisand Effect fashion, all this has really done is call that much more attention to the images and information that was taken down.

WHY?

Seriously, WTF. I understand when American companies are corrupt and do the bidding of the American government. But WTF are they doing here? What possible reason could Flickr have for trying to help the Egyptian secret police? This doesn't make any sense.